US funds direct air capture research

The US Department of Energy said August 17 it was backing research into direct air carbon capture with $24mn in funding.

As part of a US plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, the department said it was backing nine research projects exploring the nascent method of capturing and storing carbon directly from the air.

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US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said finding ways to pull carbon directly from the atmosphere “is an absolute necessity in our fight against the climate crisis.”

Some of the emerging processes mimic natural ways to pull CO₂ out of the air, utilising a series of chemical reactions and filtration to extract the greenhouse gas and release carbon-free air back into the atmosphere.

As with other green projects, direct air capture (DAC) technology requires significant investment to scale up to become economically viable.

Among the largest recipients of federal support are the University of Illinois, Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. They will share $9mn to "advance novel approaches that use electricity or light to control the capture and/or release of carbon dioxide.”

US engineering firm Black & Veatch in June secured $2.5mn in federal funding to conduct research into DAC technology

The company said the overall objective is to design a DAC system that can capture 100,000 tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere each year, a threshold that is not possible with existing DAC systems. Canada's Carbon Engineering, however, says it has developed a system that can pull 1mn mt/yr from the atmosphere, and is developing plants in Texas and Scotland to deploy its technology.